Fundraising status: 5521,43€ or 49% reached, great to see that it is moving again! To highlight how important your support is, I can tell you that we discussed with a young lady in Chitimba and she told us that she could not go to school any more has her parents lost their jobs and are fighting for having enough food to feed their family and can therefore not pay any more the 80$ yearly tuition fees…80$ this is less than what many of us are spending on a simple pair of jeans but means a year of school here in Africa… Therefore feel free to participate to my fundraising, every amount is highly welcome, even the smallest one will help! Thanks a lot and If needed, the link is still here
Stage 62: Lusaka to soccer camp
KM: 170.51 km
HM: 886 m
Time: 5h52 minutes
Flat tires: 0
Liter of water: 5 + a big bucket of ice cream and 1 Sprite
Strava link
Stage 63: Soccer camp to Ruze chalet
KM: 180.79 km
HM: 819 m
Time: 6:00 minutes
Flat tires: 1
Liter of water: 5 + 2 sprites
Strava link
Stage 64: Ruze chalet to Livingstone
KM: 150.24 km
HM: 552 m
Time: 4h43 minutes
Flat tires: 1
Liter of water: 4
Strava link
And here we are, after 1 rest day in Lusaka spent fixing my camera (the shutter is unfortunately not working any more…) it is time to hit the road again. Next stop Livingstone where we will have 3 rest days to enjoy all the fun activities available around the Victoria falls.
For this first stage of this section, we started by suffering on the 5km of dirt between our camp an the main road. Then dived into the early morning rush hours of Lusaka as we had to cross the Zambian capital. This was a fun but scary exercise, avoiding cars, pedestrians, bikes and buses was entertaining but at time scary too. A few kilometres after leaving Lusaka, we reached a new milestone as we’ve been 7000 km on the bike since our start in Cairo on January 17th. The rest of the day was spent on some very bad roads and we finished in a soccer camp, enjoying our second tropical rain of the tour after the one we had in Ethiopia
The second day of this section was extremely unspectacular, 181 km of flat roads without anything special to see, a few coke stops and a flat tire for me…that’s about it. One can nevertheless mention that we got rain for a second day in a row (luckily after having reached camp in my case). Interesting to see that we get rain where we did not expected any while we did not got any in East Africa during the rainy season.
For the third and last day of this stretch we enjoyed 150 km of rolling hills to finally reach Livingstone, once again a rather plain day. As usual I biked with Baldr and Stevie and after a bit less than 5 hours we reached Livingstone, ready to enjoy 3 days of fun and relaxation
Livingstone/Victoria
Here we are, finally our 3 days of rest in Livingstone/Victoria falls are starting. Before talking about it, I want to make a short geographical review. The Victoria Falls are located between two countries: Zimbabwe and Zambia and while the city of Victoria falls is in Zimbabwe the city of Livingstone is in Zambia and that is where we stayed.
For our first rest day, Ashley had organized a group Bungee jumping but unfortunately, the weather changed and it rained heavily during the whole day which means that no activities were taking place on that day. I therefore decided to go for a new haircut and I have to say that I started to be scared when I saw the scissors they were planning to use for doing it. Thanks god everything ended well and I finished with my head on my shoulders and without any scars!
Due to the weather, I spent the rest of the day chilling out in my hotel room while the guys camping were fighting against massive amounts of water within their camp (I felt quite lucky on that day…)
For my second rest day I booked myself a Rafting trip on the Zambezi and even if the weather was still a bit grey and humid, this was not really relevant as we would finish wet in any case.
I was looking forward to do this activity since a very long time and I’ve been lucky as the river is usually closed at this period of the year due to too high water. Thanks to the lack of rain this year, the half day rafting was still open.
And I cannot confirm if it is the best rafting on earth or not, but what an experience, rafting on the Zambezi gorges was just magic and fantastic. I was lucky to end up with a really fun group and to have in Boyd a great guide who brought this experience to the next level. And all that done in a surprisingly safe environment (safety raft following us, 3 additional guys on kayak staying around us all the time and so on.
And to finish the day, SAFPAR (the company organising the rafting) was offering, for an additional 10$, a sunset cruise (also known as booze cruise..) along the Zambezi. All you can drink and eat for 10$ + a beautiful sunset and some game viewing! The choice was quite easy and I therefore decided to join the rest of the group for a fun evening.
And for my last day in Livingstone I still had to do two things: a bungee jumping and finally watching the Victoria falls.
And that is what I did, despite a slight hangover (souvenir of the booze cruise) I took my courage in my hands and went to the Victoria falls bridge to do the big air combo. 1: A zip line as warm-up 2: A bugee to increase the Adrenaline level 3: A bridge swing to test the health of your heart!.
I do have to say that as I arrived there, I was really wondering why I decided to do that. But I met two other riders (Scott and Karl) who were doing it as well and we went together increasing our adrenaline level.
After these crazy sensation, it was time to go for something slightly more relaxing, I therefore crossed the Zimbabwean border and went to see the falls from the Zim side! What a beautiful place, these falls are so massive and beautiful, it is almost hard to believe your eyes when you see it.
After that I just had to do the usual TDA chores, meaning cleaning my bike and so on but this stay in Livingstone was just magic and I can only recommend to any person travelling in this area to stop there and enjoy the landscape, natural parks and fun activities that are offered, it is a magic place !
And here we are, after 7445.54 km, 37594 hm and 290 hours and 33 minutes on the bike, the fifteenth section is over.
I’m still doing good, and the 3 days of rest have been highly appreciated by my soul and body, I’m therefore ready for the next section which will bring us to Maun and the Okavango delta in Botswana!
And the new gallery can be found here
Fred